by Avery Flynn
“No, I’ve been very careful in my search,” Antoine said. “I hired different hunters to search for each one, then utilized different mediators to buy each of them. None of them know about the others.”
“If the beanstalk grows, how will we guard the perimeter to keep others from climbing it after us?” Veronica, as always, got to the heart of the problem.
“That’s the beauty of it, the absolute beauty.” Antoine clapped his chubby hands with glee. “Once we plant the beans while chanting the sowing spell, no one can climb up the beanstalk except us. A magical force field not only blocks others from ascending the giant stem, it grants the cover of invisibility.”
“And until the beans are planted?” Veronica asked.
Antoine paused then turned around and faced them. The full moon’s light added a soft halo to the white hair sticking up wildly from his scalp. Deep worry lines slashed across his forehead, destroying his standard joyful expression. Slowly and steadily, he grasped the silver handle of his scimitar and slid it from the scabbard.
Antoine had discovered King Shahyar’s curved backsword decades ago in Persia after following clues scribbled in the margin of the original manuscript of Arabian Nights, as it’s known in English. It was on that trip his beloved Chloe had been struck and killed by a double-decker bus.
“Until we plant the beans and chant the sowing spell, we must be ever watchful. We are not alone in these woods,” Antoine said.
Jax took an automatic step closer to Veronica. The vanilla of her perfume mixed with the moss-scent of the woods, teasing his senses.
She didn’t acknowledge his closeness, but her shoulders relaxed.
His hands ached to massage the knot that formed across her upper back whenever her stress levels peaked. Every time she had returned to their small, studio apartment after dinner at her parents’ mansion, he’d pull the Murphy Bed down from the wall. She’d lie in the center and he’d rub the lavender oil across her delicate back, paying much care to the tension tightening her shoulders. Eventually, he would work his way down her spine with his fingers until they wrapped around her hips. Then they’d both end up getting covered in oil.
That memory was the last place he needed to be. Time to smarten up, before he fucked up more. Towering over her much smaller frame, he swore to himself to protect her as he’d done before. No matter the cost.
“Then let’s be on our way.” Veronica’s smooth voice carried over the warm summer breeze.
They trudged in silence until they came to a small clearing. Seven large boulders formed a circle in the tall grass. Antoine marched into the center. Veronica followed without hesitation.
A cold blast of air shot through Jax when he passed between two of the boulders. Once inside the boundary, the breeze disappeared. The air hummed around them and the sound of a child singing in a high-pitched voice was barely discernible. He closed his eyes to concentrate on the lyrics.
“Ring around the rosie, a pocketful of posie. Ashes. Ashes. We all fall down.”
An ode to the plague brought up by his subconscious or a warning from beyond? Either way, it sent a shiver down his spine. Again, he stationed himself at Veronica’s six, searching the surrounding woods for danger, while Antoine dug a hole with his camp shovel.
A pile of loose dirt grew next to where Antoine kneeled and dug. Finally, the hole was about a foot deep and he stopped. Resting back on his heels, the old man drew a white handkerchief from his pocket and patted down his forehead and under the bridge of his glasses.
“Veronica and Jax, we need to form a triangle around the hole.” He took a deep swig from a silver flask embossed with a giant and a young boy. “Try to make the distance equal between us.”
Antoine replaced the cap on the flask and deposited the silver canister in his knapsack. He reached out to hold Veronica’s and Jax’s hands. “Now you two.”
Tentative and a bit nervous to touch her again, Jax curled his rough fingers around her smooth ones. She squeezed his hand. A jolt of electricity snapped between them. It could have been a mystical connection here in the stone circle, but it felt deeper, older and more personal. His gaze caught hers and his heartbeat calmed to a deliberate rhythm.
Antoine exhaled a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Mystic beanstalk, grow for this three. To heights unseen, love is the key. Riches we’ll find, all that may be. Three you require, three we be.”
Wind whipped through the circle, picking up stray leaves and debris and blowing it sideways with such speed, Jax couldn’t see the world outside the boulders. The moon brightened until it neared the sun’s brilliance. The children’s singing grew more distinct, ringing out clearly around them.
Undeterred, Antoine raised his eyebrows, urging Veronica and him to join in his chant. The words tumbled forth.
“Mystic beanstalk, grow for this three. To heights unseen, love is the key. Riches we’ll find, all that may be. Three you require, three we be.”
The gusts increased in ferocity, the temperature dropping until Jax’s breath froze in his nostrils.
The tiny glass bottle containing the beans floated out of Antoine’s pocket. It danced through the air in time with the measured pace with which they chanted the spell.
“Mystic beanstalk, grow for this three. To heights unseen, love is the key. Riches we’ll find, all that may be. Three you require, three we be.”
Wind yowled around them.
A beam of light shot out of the hole Antoine had dug.
The glass bottle exploded and the three beans dropped like rocks into the ground.
“Ashes. Ashes.” The children sang in deafening screams. “We all fall down.”
The light disappeared. The air stilled and the voices vanished into silence.
Jax’s heartbeat echoed in his ears. Sweat ran down his neck like a flooded river, when moments before, it had been so cold he could see his breath.
The three of them collapsed. Veronica rested her head against his shoulder, her almond-shaped eyes closed. Jax wrapped an arm around her, and was amazed when she allowed him to bring her closer. The bittersweet moment taunted him. If he’d never made that awful call, would they still be together? Married? Would he be sleep deprived and rocking a newborn into the wee hours? An ache burned his gut. The old wound had never completely healed, he’d just gotten used to the daily throb.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her soft hair.
Veronica stiffened and pulled away. She not only refused to say anything to him, she wouldn’t even look in his direction. His arm fell awkwardly to his side.
The hole had been filled in, the dirt patted down. If he didn’t know better, he’d believe the ground had never been disturbed.
Antoine rocked back and forth on the grass, mumbling what sounded like an incantation. He circled his hand above the buried beans three times, then brought his palm down to the cool dirt. An otherworldly hush fell and the stars sparkled like literal diamonds in the sky. He looked up at the heavens, the moon bathing his face in light. “Three you require, three we be.”
And then, nothing. For a long frickin’ time. Nothing.
Something poked him in the butt. He must have settled down onto a rock.
Would Veronica still taste of jasmine? Did she still start with the opinion page first and use the sports page to line her trash cans? What had it felt like when she’d finally built up the nerve to tell her father to fuck off?
Oh yeah, he’d heard the story. At least twelve people had called him up to tell him about how her father had demanded she give up her treasure hunting hobby or he’d cut her off. For the first time in her life, she’d given her dad the figurative bird. Jax had added a Google alert for Kwon Limited when she’d started her treasure hunting company, and had reveled in each of her finds. She’d always had the ability to whittle something down to bare bones and find the clues others had overlooked.
Antoine cleared his throat. “A watched pot never boils, you know. Let’s set up camp.”
Without waiting for their response, the older man brought out a flat metal object the size of a business envelope and pushed the single green button on its top. It flipped open, and out popped three miniature tents. Shuffling from one spot to another, he arranged the miniatures in a triangle around the beans. Once they were in place, he clapped his hands three times.
The tents rose from the grass and spun around at dizzying speeds before dropping, full sized, to the ground.
“Well then, children, I bid you goodnight. Have a good rest. I imagine we’ll have quite an eventful day tomorrow.” With that, Antoine walked into his tent and zipped shut the door flap.
Veronica strutted into her tent and closed the flap behind her.
Now she’d peel off the black leather jumpsuit, revealing her soft, porcelain skin inch by inch...
He’d fooled himself into thinking he didn’t want her anymore, when in reality, he’d never stopped loving her. Not that she realized the truth.
When he’d gone home to North Carolina after his mother had broken her hip, he’d recommended Kwon Limited to the clients whose jobs were far from home. The quid pro quo being, those clients couldn’t tell Veronica who’d recommended her company.
She hadn’t just taken the opportunities he’d thrown her way, she’d made her own. The woman had worked at lightning speed to establish her company. His email had blown up with all the Google alert notices about her.
Damn, if he hadn’t already been in love with Veronica, reading about her exploits would have done it. Maybe this was fate giving him a second chance. The idea put an extra spring in his step. He’d find a way to get her to understand why he left. He had to.
Jax turned to his tent, ready to settle in for a long, sleepless night of plotting, but a crunch sounded behind him. He spun toward the sound and, fingers curled around the handle of the knife at his waist, searched the darkness for enemies.
A snapping sounded. This time lower.
Something green on the ground caught his eye.
A vine, three inches in diameter, poked through the dirt.
Chapter 3
Veronica grabbed a handful of thick green vine and pulled herself up, testing how well the beanstalk, so tall she couldn’t see the top of it, would hold her weight. She hung suspended, her boot-clad feet dangling in the open space. Gritting her teeth, she completed five pull ups before dropping to the soft grass below.
“So we know it can hold a pint-sized badass. Let’s see if it can hold me.” Jax circled her and scurried up the beanstalk.
His strong arms curved around the green trunk, biceps bulging. It was too thick for his hands to meet, but he gripped the intertwining vines making up the bulk of the beanstalk. Soon all she could see were the thick soles of his climbing boots. Her heartbeat sped up. One wrong move, one broken vine and he’d plummet to the ground. A fall like that meant death.
Worry stabbed her in the sternum. “Be careful.”
“What’s wrong, darling? Worried about me?” His tight butt came into view as he shimmied back down.
Damn, his Southern drawl used to turn her insides to honey. They’d be having a completely respectable dinner and then he’d lean over and whisper in her ear. It didn’t even have to be anything flirty. He could say pass the peas in that voice and it just did something to her. Hell, who was she kidding? Everything about this man still did something to her.
Refusing to surrender to the giddy feeling, she crossed her arms and shot him a dirty look. “No, I just don’t want to have to clean your blood off my boots.”
“Tsk-tsk. Veronica Kwon, are you flirting with me?”
“Been there. Done that. Have the snot-covered wedding dress to prove it.” Just saying the words ripped the scab right off the wound.
Jax dropped with a thump to the grass beside her, not touching but so close she could feel the current running between them. “About that–”
She gulped down the lump in her throat. “Let’s not. Let’s just pretend it never happened, get this job done and make Antoine a very happy, very rich old man.”
Now he did touch her, tucking a stray hair behind her ear with his fingers. Then he traced her jawline with his thumb. His eyes darkened to an almost inky black.
Her pulse went into overdrive, sending lust on a wild ride through her. Her nipples tightened to almost painful buds and her thighs turned to Jell-O. She wanted to jump him. Right then. Right there.
Jax dropped his hand and stepped back. Lucky for her, he hadn’t given her the chance. “So we start fresh.”
She needed to pull it together, get ahold of her hormones. “That’s not exactly–”
He shoved his hand out. “Jax Taylor, archeologist specializing in magical relics. I enjoy fried okra, cold bottles of beer and sappy romantic comedies. Shh, don’t tell my buddies.” He gazed at her, wide eyed. “And you are?”
“Veronica Kwon.”
He raised an eyebrow expectantly.
Against her better judgment, she played along. Want with a capital W pooled in her belly when she shook his hand. “Veronica Kwon, former spoiled heiress and current treasure hunter extraordinaire. I enjoy my grandmother’s–and only my grandmother’s–kimchi, drinking too many iced coffees and I hate shoe shopping. Definitely don’t tell my mother.”
“A gentlemen never tells.” Jax gave her an exaggerated wink. “So you doing anything special today?”
By now she couldn’t stop the giggles. No one made her relax quite like Jax. “Nah, just climbing a ginormous beanstalk, having a peek around a kingdom in the clouds and hauling down untold riches. You?”
“Funny enough, I’m doing the same thing. We might as well go together.”
“Might as well.”
In the time a hummingbird would have taken to flap its wings, the moment went from light-hearted to heady. The heat appeared again in his brown eyes, so intense she wanted to fall in and never climb back out. More than a look, it had power and meaning. It was magic. She couldn’t look away–much to the joy of the armada of butterflies shooting off lust torpedoes in her belly.
Antoine let out a whoop of glee. “This bodes well, it does indeed. The beanstalk likes you two. I’ve heard about how it sometimes acts as an aphrodisiac. Good thing I got here in time or heavens knows what I would have seen when exiting my tent.”
Veronica jumped. She hadn’t just experienced a real connection with Jax. The effect was the same as grabbing a glass of tea and realizing only after having a mouthful that it was bourbon. Embarrassment at how she’d practically thrown herself at her ex-fiance burned down her gullet.
Once again she was alone in that dressing room, panicking as the walls closed in on her. “I can’t do this, Veronica. I’m sorry.” Then he’d hung up. She’d come completely undone, and had refused to leave the dressing room until the clerk tapped on the door for the fifth time. When she’d walked out of the dressing room, still swathed in lace and silk, she’d sworn she’d never get taken in again. Not by Jax. Not by her father. Not by anyone. Looked like she needed to add anything–plant, animal or mineral–to the list.
Desperate to escape, she kept her eyes averted. “Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“God, I hope it does.” Jax cupped her chin, tilted her head until her gaze met his. “We need to talk.”
She spun out of his grasp and put a yard of air between them, huffing huge gasps of breath. “Let’s keep it focused on the treasure. Professional.”
A crooked smile curled his full lips. “With us it always goes way beyond professional.”
Refusing to get pulled into that conversation, she squared her shoulders and turned to Antoine. “So are we ready to do this?”
The older man patted his knapsack straps and nodded. “By all means, please lead the way.”
Scaling the beanstalk took almost all her concentration, a little favor from God for which she was more than glad. Antoine took up what was left of her attention with his history lesson about the beanstalk. Still, every once in a while,
an updraft sent a puff of air scented with Jax’s cologne her way and her resolve to keep things professional wavered. Starting things fresh between them began to make more sense.
“So I should warn you that we may not be entirely alone once we arrive at the castle,” Antoine said.
“Don’t tell me you’re expecting giants.” Jax’s voice carried up from a few feet below. “They passed into extinction a hundred years ago.”
“Nasty thing, Sir Cravish’s supposed cure. They thought it was a chance to live a normal life, you know. Sir Cravish promised the giants they’d be transformed to a more manageable size, wouldn’t have to spend so much on food and could buy ready-built homes as opposed to dismantling mountain ranges for enough stone to build their huge castles.”
“What went wrong?” Veronica asked.
“No one is really sure. They shrank to only a foot or so taller than the average man. Then something went terribly wrong. It was a frightening time. More than ten thousand giants died in forty-eight hours. The rest vanished. One moment they were there in the hospital, the next–poof–they were all gone.”
Nothing disappeared. Not really. They had to be somewhere. Could they have gone back home? “Where do you think they went?”
“Heaven? Hell? Some place in between? Who knows?”
“What do you think is waiting up there?” Jax had voiced the concern growing in her mind.
“Probably nothing. But it’s always best to be prepared.”
“What’s your backup plan, to skedaddle down the beanstalk while we fight off hungry giants?” Veronica couldn’t help but laugh as she delivered the absurd line.
“You’d be surprised.” Antoine cackled like a dime-novel villain. “But enough about that. Let me tell you about the riches told to be in the castle. Gold coins, cups and treasures. A goose that lays golden eggs. A harp that plays the most beautiful melodies guaranteed to soothe away worries or cares.”
By now the clouds, already thick and puffy, had become impossibly dense. She pulled a retractable garden shovel with a seven-inch pointed tip out of her tool belt. It slid into the white mass like a hot knife into cold, hard ice cream, working like a dream but not without effort. Sweat had formed on her nape by the time she’d scooped out enough cloud to create a tunnel.
